When To Pitch It?

[MJL]

When do you pitch a hat? At what point do you say the old fella has no more life in it and should be sent to valhalla? I have worn hats until they looked liked something Goober Pyle wore but I am not sure I could get away with that now that I have a respectable job and wife.

 

[hatflick1]

HAT PITCHING

Of all the hats I own, my true favorite is a somewhat discolored, shapeless Open Road. Probably from the fifties. This is the topper I grab to run around doing errands, hitting flea markets, mowing the yard and so forth. Kind of a surrogate dog.
As such. I could never take it to the pound, to extend the metaphor. Find it a good new home? Sure. My point is, don't be too quick to 'pitch' these old and moldy fedoras. If they're 7 3/8 or 7 1/2, there me be a guy like me out there who would buy them.

 

[Biltmore Bob]

I keep them...

Never know...

 

[Michael Mallory]

Discarding is a very subjective thing, but as a rule, I err on the side of high turnover. If a straw breaks, out it goes. If a felt loses it's shape or the brim just can't be controlled anymore, it gets donated to a thrift shop or a school theatre department. Basically, if it doesn't look good anymore, or I've changed my wardrobe sufficiently enough so that a hat no longer color matches my clothes, then thanks for the service, but bye-bye. I have a Scala Panama that has seen some heavy service. It hasn't yet broken, but the pleasing sun-faded shade of ochre it bore last year (it started out cocoa) has since become a mottled yellow with odd pewter shadows, and it's beginning to look tacky. So, this is probably it's last summer with me. Then I'll have to buy a new one. Damn.

 

[Biltmore Bob]

I still have a Beaver Brand Cowboy Hat ...

I had in High School...let's see that would make it more than 25 years old. I had it in the Marines and wore it off and on through the 80s. It kinda looks like Jed Clampetts hat, but I still have it.

 

[chuckbeverly926]

Throw my hats away?

What a good question to ask. A question worthy of my wife, and one I would have never thought to ask. When I began buying hats I wore a 7 ¼, now a 7 ¼ perches atop my head like one of the New Year’s Eve gag hats. Yet, I still keep them. “Throw my hats away? Are you crazy? Why do you think I built that shed around back? Right, to store your stuff in so I will have room for my hats in the closet. That is why.� When we get to the current 7 ½ sizes the problem become simpler. I don’t ever recall throwing away/giving away/loaning out one of my 7 ½. Years ago I had one of the first 7 ½ hats I ever bought, a Stetson Open Road, and a truly great hat, cleaned, blocked, and ruined by a “hatter.� I could have done better myself at the Laundromat. I still have that withered up, misshapen beauty in my closet, in a hat box packed in mothballs. “Throw my hats away? Are you crazy?�

 

[MJL]

I live in a small, antique house. These old houses didn't have a lot of storage space like the new homes do. I really think the folks in the old days owned a lot less clothes than we do now. I could not hold onto everything I wanted to if I tried. It literally comes down to a choice between new thing coming in....something HAS to go. I hate the feeling. Need I mention I am looking for another home!

 

[Michaelson]

I've only had two hats that have lived out their usefulness, having holes in the crown, and tears where the sweatband had been removed and sewn in so many times the brim performated from the crown. I am of the same nostalgic frame of mind that they served to well to be just tossed away in the trash. Both were burned in our wood stove....yes, Viking funerials for two old friends.

Regards! Michaelson

 

[Kentucky Blues]

You pitch a hat when your wife tells you it has to go, and you can't even give it away, let alone sell it. Otherwise, you keep it

 

[Michael D]

I don't chuck my old hats I give them away to friends or family.

I gave an old (and cheap) panama I had, to a teenager after he wore it in a play where he played the Fred Astaire character in the Girl Hunt Ballet from the movie the Bandwagon.

I gave a South African Safari and a Stetson Straw Gambler to a couple of teenage girls that were friends of my sons who really liked them. (The problem with this is when they went off and got married their mother gave them back to me, so I sold them to someone at work who was starting a photo studio).

I gave a grey Beaver Hat Brand fedora of mine to my son who had worn it in a production of Guys and Dolls.

Oh, the other place my old hats go is into my wife's costume box. I don't think I've ever thrown a hat away.

Oh yeah, they may also be given to Goodwill.

Mike

 

[feltfan]

Throw away vintage felt?

I have yet to throw away a hat. If you saw my house
you'd realize I have yet to throw away a lot of things...

Anyway, one thing I hate to toss is a vintage item
that can no longer be replaced. I have thrown away
very little bakelite in my time. I have not yet managed
to throw away a vintage felt hat.

I wonder if there is any use or reuse for that fine felt?
That 1940s fedora with too many moth holes to salvage-
can it be shredded, churned up, and made into something
new with the charm of the original material? Can new hat
felt be made from old (and still be superior to what is made now)?

 

[K.D. Lightner]

I have only thrown away old straw hats that shredded; right now I am downsizing for my move back to Iowa and am giving away hats to people at work, mostly old straw hats I somehow acquired in the last decade or so, plus a few cowboy hats that don't fit.

The workers here are delighted. Some wear the straws on their power-walks at lunchtime, others take them home. I gave a wool Dakota hat to a little boy who was so delighted he wore it around the office beaming a big smile. One woman, who took a cowboy hat, says that when she wears or sees it, she will remember me.

I can't imagine I would ever throw out a fur felt; like feltfan, I would wonder if it could somehow be "recycled" and turned in to a new (old) hat.

karol